Arkansas film festival will focus on gay community

Caleb Feeney stars in Arkansas filmmaker Mark Thiedeman’s White Nights, which will screen as part of the second annual Kaleidoscope Film Festival.
Caleb Feeney stars in Arkansas filmmaker Mark Thiedeman’s White Nights, which will screen as part of the second annual Kaleidoscope Film Festival.

There's an unfortunate tendency among many to pretend that the only places worthy of cultural attention are the (perhaps too) large metropolitan centers -- your New Yorks, Chicagos and Londons. (After all, who wants to land in "fly-over country"?) But, wherever there are people, there exists a great multiplicity of experiences and voices, desperate to be heard. And wherever there are voices, there are those eager to listen.

Tony Taylor, executive director and director of programming for the Film Society of Little Rock, recognized this and helped to establish the state's only lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender film festival: Kaleidoscope Film Festival, which kicked off Thursday and runs through Sunday.

Taylor, who also serves as the festival's director, says the initial inspiration for the event came about four years ago, when he started to notice the lack of LGBT films playing in Arkansas.

"I was just really looking at the movies playing at festivals like Frameline and Outfest [LGBT film festivals], and I noticed there was just a lot of those films that I would just really like to see but, living in Arkansas, just have no opportunity to see," he said. "Even if I wanted to watch them online, it would take months or years to appear."

With no avenue for these films, Taylor decided to create one. He and some friends formed the Film Society of Little Rock and started work on what would become Kaleidoscope Film Festival.

In determining the programming, one of the things that was important to Taylor and his team was capturing the diversity of voices in the LGBT community.

"The LGBT community is not just, you know, a homosexual group ... Whatever demographic you can think of, that makes up the LGBT community. So we want to represent as many people as we can in that community."

The films being shown this year come from all over the world -- from the United Kingdom (Departure) and Chile (You'll Never Be Alone) to right here in Arkansas (White Nights by local filmmaker Mark Thiedeman). There's even a special spotlight on Hispanic LGBT cinema.

While only in its second year, Kaleidoscope has shown impressive growth. Taylor said, " [We] did keep it more low-key on purpose [our first year]. I've been part of film festivals for a number of years now, so I know it's no small endeavor. There's a lot of work that goes into it."

The plan to be small yet visible worked and a few months ago, the Argenta Arts District signed a deal with the Film Society to be the presenting sponsor for this year's festival. This partnership has allowed for a sort of organic expansion.

"We think that it's a perfect area to have this, to create a pedestrian film festival. We're screening a few more films this year than last year. We've added more parties this year than last year," Taylor said.

The festival is also attracting filmmakers to talk about their works after the screenings. The opening night film, Southwest of Salem (which tells the story of the San Antonio Four, four Hispanic lesbian women who were convicted of the sexual assault of two young girls in 1994 but have been released on parole; a judge has recommended that the convictions be vacated), will be attended by the director and the four women.

"That's a lot of people from a film or documentary to have at a screening. Not just at Kaleidoscope, but any film festival in this state to have five people here for one film. It's just incredibly exciting," Taylor said.

He says that his team has some big plans for the festival's future.

"We're bringing 15 feature films this year, and we hope to grow that into at least twice that number over the next year or two ... We want it to grow into one of the largest -- if not the largest -- LGBT film festivals in the South. We want this to be a regional film festival, not just a state film festival."

Taylor sums up the mission of Kaleidoscope and Film Society of Little Rock:

"One of the main goals of Kaleidoscope is to show that we are a diverse community. We are not just the current headline in the news. The LGBT community is your family, your friends, your neighbors, your co-workers, people you go to school with. You know, we are the people you've known your entire life, whether you knew we were a part of the LGBT community or not."

To check the schedule and buy tickets for the Kaleidoscope Film Festival, go to kaleidoscopefilmfestival.com.

MovieStyle on 08/19/2016

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